Look at my website in September 2006 for a new story with MASH Aurora AFX Slotcars and Sets

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
Tekstvak: AURORA AFX PUSH CARS Recent offering for sale of a push on e-bay reminded me of the story behind it. During 1983 Neurenberg toy fair we were introduced to senior Mattel Italy Management, that was investigating the extension of their Hot Wheels product line. Richard Wadsworth and I visited Mattel Italy in the end of March of that year in their offices near lake LAGO MAGGIORE in a small village close to Arona. In our conversations it was clear that they were looking for more European type models as Hot Wheels was very much an American product line. A difficult line to sell in Italy. After long discussions it was clear that racing sets was, due to a very expensive trafo required in Italy, a mission impossible as the margins Mattel wanted for an outside sourced product made the price points too high against the competition of Polystyle.They were more interested in our car bodies, especially the formula one and European like road cars for their so called Easter eggs and back to school promotions. The volume of cars they were looking for, 2.0 million was in a time we had problems filling our factory in Singapore very interesting. AURORA s president Ian Holland approved the project if was for the Italian market only under following conditions: 1.car body molded in one color, no chrome, no abs but poly 2. max. two paint masks per car. 3. limited number of bodies We selected about 24 car bodies. We were able to make these for the prices Mattel Italy was willing to pay. Formula one cars, like Ferrari, Renault and lotus looked really great. On the first prototypes we had a flat black chassis, the only change required was that we had to make the bottom look like a Hot Wheels car in chrome. Prototypes were made on Hot Wheels blisters, Achilles Davanzo the President of Mattel Italy needed approval from Mattel Inc. to order product from an outside source. John Amerman the president of Mattel International rejected the approval as this was too much competition to the Hot Wheels plant in Malaysia. The prototypes never made it to sale. Tekstvak: THE WINNER OF OUR APRIL QUIZ IS ………….. First we like to thank you all for the many replies we received on our quiz. It really showed us how many fans are looking to our site www.aurora-afx.nl. Quite remarkable we received more replies from Europeans as from Americans. Even after so many years it still looks like Formula one racing is more popular in Europe. We invite one of our American readers to send us a quiz more applicable for the u.s. afx fans. Not many replies this time, but almost all the voters selected : AURORA AFX: FAST,SMALL ,TOP DETAILS. The special original Aurora AFX dvd goes to To Thomas Lutgert from Germany, Congratulations Thomas. In our November Issue we will do a special AURORA AFX QUIZ this time with a game of knowledge prepared by John A. Clark author of HO Slot Car Identification and price guide (most people know him as Slot Car Johnnie's). Comments (and compliments)how to improve our site are also appreciated.

Dutch AFX Racing Center

 

 Han van den Berg

Albert Driessen

 

Telephone:

 

 +31321848143

 

Fax:

 

 +31321848143

 

E-mail:

 

  aurora.afx@chello.nl

 

 

 

Contact: